The problem with the Norman idea, it seems to me, is that there doesn't seem to be much evidence that the Normans were predominantly U106. Perhaps they were, but I haven't seen any evidence of it. Certainly the Normandy Y-DNA Project, which, admittedly, is pretty small, gives no indication of it.

Maybe the Norman nobility was predominantly U106; I don't know.

I don't see any evidence that U106 is a major part of Norman Y DNA lineages, although, certainly they were enough to be mixed so U106 might have easily joined with the Norman establishment in forms of Flemish or Frankish allies.

I agree, so we have got this weird pocket of 19.4% U106xU198 in Busby's Moray sample. I'm not convinced it's prehistoric, but it could be, I guess.

I just think it's a little strange, and we don't yet know how to account for it. It would be nice to have that Moray U106 broken down into its constituent subclades. We know, at least, that none of it was U198.

According to Alistair Moffat, the reason why Moray, Aberdeen, Nairn and Banff are Doric speaking is due to David 1st resettling people from Northumberland there in the 1130s. The explanation was in a radio broadcast in which scotsman James Naughtie learned that he was 'an angle'. It's about 2 mins into the broadcast:

Just in case anybody's slightly curious about James Naughtie's slightly anti Welsh sounding sentiment in this interview, it's because his co-presenter, John Humphrys, who sniggered at his 'English DNA' is in fact a Welshman

I was told by somebody who went to school with him that he wasn't brought up in Splot but rather the more upmarket area of Roath :)

Thanks for that. I wondered what the Splott comment was all about. Mind you, referring to him as 'one of those little black gnomes from Britanny' was a rather more cutting remark.

For those who don't know John Humphrys, he is a BBC journalist who has been known to give politicians a very hard time, so if he can dish it out, he also has to be able to take it, for the sake of balanced broadcasting that is.

I was told by somebody who went to school with him that he wasn't brought up in Splot but rather the more upmarket area of Roath :)

Thanks for that. I wondered what the Splott comment was all about. Mind you, referring to him as 'one of those little black gnomes from Britanny' was a rather more cutting remark.

For those who don't know John Humphrys, he is a BBC journalist who has been known to give politicians a very hard time, so if he can dish it out, he also has to be able to take it, for the sake of balanced broadcasting that is.

cheersauthun

hmm I shall have to listen to that interview again, it's a while since it was broadcast and I can't remember any gnomes being mentioned :)

To be honest I was just a little peeved at James being described as English just because he was I1d !!, apart from anything else even if the rest of the info was correct his family had presumably been living in Scotland for how long ??

I do find people who declare that you can't be genuine this that or the other because you don't have the appropriate haplogroup a bit tedious.

And of course this type of logic is followed by threats of retribution if you dare suggest these SNPs could have originated elsewhere, ho hum.

To be honest I was just a little peeved at James being described as English just because he was I1d !!, apart from anything else even if the rest of the info was correct his family had presumably been living in Scotland for how long ??

Well, they do make that point and Humphrys is muttering in the background about filling in the complaint forms for the racial equality commission.

To be honest I was just a little peeved at James being described as English just because he was I1d !!, apart from anything else even if the rest of the info was correct his family had presumably been living in Scotland for how long ??

Well, they do make that point and Humphrys is muttering in the background about filling in the complaint forms for the racial equality commission.

bestauthun

I shall have to listen to it again. I recorded it off BBC's iplayer shortly after it was broadcasted but apart from playing the 'at least I'm not Welsh' bit to various fellow Walians (who all found it very amusing :) I've not listened to the rest since then.

The best stand in for the Angles is the modern population of Jutland, The best evidence we have for the genetic make up of Denmark comes from the Myres' data. U106 reaches it's highest density at 21% in north Denmark, not the southern part where the Angles came from,

On the other hand, there is no reason to suppose that all the people who were known as Angles in England came solely from Angeln in southern Jutland. We know from the differences in dress assemblages1 in burials that people from northern Jutland were involved too and Hines expands the continental catchment area for all those known as Angles in England to include parts of Norway, 'The Scandinavian character of Anglian England in the pre-Viking period'.

In addition, the greatest hero of Anglo Saxon epic poetry is a Geat, not an Angle and Sutton Hoo has strong affinities with the Vendel period Sweden. The saga of Ida the Flamebearer, the legendary founder of Bernicia has him making landfall in the mid 6th cent. a time coincident with depopulation in parts of southern Norway, Joel Gunn, 'The years without summer: tracing A.D. 536 and its aftermath', and major changes in the structure of society in Denmark in the mid 6th cent.

Nor do I find some settlement by Normans and Flemings a reasonable explanation why the highest proportion of U106 is in Moray.

According to Alistair Moffat, the reason why Moray, Aberdeen, Nairn and Banff are Doric speaking is due to David 1st resettling people from Northumberland there in the 1130s. The explanation was in a radio broadcast in which scotsman James Naughtie learned that he was 'an angle'. It's about 2 mins into the broadcast:

One piece of evidence that may be persuasive of a U106 link to some Northumbrian Angles is the L257+ Dunbar YDNA cluster. It is large and looks to be possibly the line of the descendants of Gospatrick, perhaps son of Uhtred the Bold, ealdorman of Northumbria, the TMRCA calculations seem to fit. Of course, that does not mean all Angles were U106 but some of them may well have been.

I have never suggested that U106 wasn't common in the Germanic tribes, including the Angles. My argument is simply that because much of U106 is of Germanic origin, it doesn't necessarily follow that all of it was.

One has a far easier time arguing for some prehistoric U106 in SE Britain than for an isolated chunk of it in NE Scotland in Moray. It seems to me David I's settlement of Northumbrians there better satisfies the requirements of Occam's Razor. We know it happened, for one thing.

The U106 there in Moray has the look of something that was dropped there by somebody. A "plantation" of outsiders by a 12th-century king makes perfect sense. A prehistoric island of U106 in a sea of L21 just does not.

U106 would not have to predominate among the Angles in England or in Jutland for some U106 to have gone with the Northumbrians to Moray. Listen to Moffat's conversation with Naughtie that authun linked above. Naughtie is I1d ("S142"), not U106. From what I have seen, I1 and U106 seem to have their high frequency spots in the same places in Britain. Since I1, like U106, is common in the old homelands of the Anglo-Saxons, that is an indication of the source of both haplogroups in Britain, prehistoric or otherwise.

It would make more sense, it seems to me, to argue that the U106 in Northumbria that got sent north to Moray by David I had its ultimate source in prehistoric U106 from SE Britain than to argue for a pocket of U106 that has been in Moray since prehistoric times. Either way, it's a stretch.

I believe the point made by Wilson and Moffat is that U106 is present all along the east coast of Britain, but its not disimilar presence in areas where there was no Germanic settlement suggests some of it got there before the Anglo-Saxons. This doesn't require an isolated presence of U106 in Moray. If they were able to cross the channel during prehistoric times, there is no reason why they couldn't have sailed up the entire east coast of Britain.

If one starts with the assumption that NO U106 in Britain can be of pre-Anglo-Saxon origin, one can always find ways to interpret the evidence to reinforce that assumption. There are few places in western Europe the Germanic people didn't get to at one time or another. If U106 is found in northern Italy, they must be Lombards. If found in Sicily, they must be Norman. If in Spain, even amongst the Basques, they are Vandals or Visigoths. In Wales or Ireland, Anglo-Saxon immigrants or Viking descendants, even if they have Welsh or Gaelic surnames. And now if in Moray, Normans, Flemings or transplanted Northumbrians. I have even seen a U106 person in Poland explained as a Norman. Because some possible explanation must be found which will not upset the original hypothesis.

Is it reasonable that P312 roamed throughout western Europe during the late Neolithic or Bronze Age, while U106, which was probably born about the same time and place, confined itself exclusively to Scandinavia and northern Germany until the migration period?

There are few places in western Europe the Germanic people didn't get to at one time or another. If U106 is found in northern Italy, they must be Lombards. If found in Sicily, they must be Norman. If in Spain, even amongst the Basques, they are Vandals or Visigoths.

Don't forget the Swabians, the Hohenstaufens in Sicily and Hermeric in Galicia!

Barbujani summarised the sort of process you are warning against in 'Genes, people and languages.' in 2000.

"An ad hoc mining of the historical record can lead to a spurious association of any finding in human population genetics with any historical episode that could potentially explain it."

We had the same with the discovery of an Hg A1 lineage in Yorkshire. Being so old, it is extremely rare with only three or four lineages in europe and a couple of dozen in sub saharan Africa. "They must have come with the romans," it was claimed. Why? Anytime since the LGM seems just as likely to me.

I believe the point made by Wilson and Moffat is that U106 is present all along the east coast of Britain, but its not disimilar presence in areas where there was no Germanic settlement suggests some of it got there before the Anglo-Saxons. This doesn't require an isolated presence of U106 in Moray.

The difficulty is that we don't have a baseline for a late pre-roman iron age population in Britain. It has dogged all the studies since Wilson in 2000 when he used North Wales as representative. Weale followed in 2002 but warned of this shortcoming. Clines are usual in western europe, but Britain was assumed to have no clines in the LPRIA population.

In 2003 Capelli used the Irish and Basque population as the baseline, which was very close to the north wales sample but we ended up with a situation where out of the 4 centres sampled by Weale and Capelli, Llangefni, Llanidloes, Abergele and Haverfordwest, only two looked welsh. The other two were in completely different parts of the PC plot. Llanidloes, which was closer to York and Norfolk than Llangefni turned out to have been heavily influenced by a resettlement of lead miners from Derbyshire in the middle ages. What can explain Abergele is of course being currently investigated by Andy Grierson.

By the same token, an assumption that U106 must have been present in the British Isles during the LPRIA cannot be made solely on the basis that it exists in areas which were not subject to anglo saxon settlement. It has to be demonstrated, ie the possibility of later migrations ruled out, the discovery of ancient DNA in a pre roman population or plausible neolithic/bronze age contacts supported by archaeology and so on.

Several linguists have often pointed to the sheep scoring numerals in Yorkshire as evidence of survival of the brythonic language in upland areas. However, once again an alternative explanation is proposed. Many leadminers migrated to Yorkshire from Wales and the historical record shows that when the seams ran out, they turned to sheep farming for their livelihood. So, why favour the one explanation over the other? Unless an explanation can be found which absolutely requires one explanation, where no other explanation will do, the matter should remain open.

I believe the point made by Wilson and Moffat is that U106 is present all along the east coast of Britain, but its not disimilar presence in areas where there was no Germanic settlement suggests some of it got there before the Anglo-Saxons. This doesn't require an isolated presence of U106 in Moray. If they were able to cross the channel during prehistoric times, there is no reason why they couldn't have sailed up the entire east coast of Britain.

If one starts with the assumption that NO U106 in Britain can be of pre-Anglo-Saxon origin, one can always find ways to interpret the evidence to reinforce that assumption. There are few places in western Europe the Germanic people didn't get to at one time or another. If U106 is found in northern Italy, they must be Lombards. If found in Sicily, they must be Norman. If in Spain, even amongst the Basques, they are Vandals or Visigoths. In Wales or Ireland, Anglo-Saxon immigrants or Viking descendants, even if they have Welsh or Gaelic surnames. And now if in Moray, Normans, Flemings or transplanted Northumbrians. I have even seen a U106 person in Poland explained as a Norman. Because some possible explanation must be found which will not upset the original hypothesis.

Is it reasonable that P312 roamed throughout western Europe during the late Neolithic or Bronze Age, while U106, which was probably born about the same time and place, confined itself exclusively to Scandinavia and northern Germany until the migration period?

That's all well and good and true. But in this case there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the presence of an isolated pocket of U106 in a place where it is otherwise unexpected, and that is David I's settlement of Northumbrians in Moray in the 12th century. That's not a region where no Anglo-Saxons ever settled. We now know David I put some there.

We know that happened. No need to strain for another explanation . Why explain the presence of U106 there as prehistoric when there is no real reason to believe that is the case?

I mean, why believe the U106 in Moray is prehistoric? Why? Any good reason for that belief? It's there, so it must be prehistoric?

If you demand that the "Germanic-U106" crowd justify their claims, surely you must be willing to justify yours.

I don't think U106 is necessarily Germanic everywhere and all the time, but I do think Germanic is the best general fit for the distribution of U106 (and for the fact that in England I1 seems to accompany it). I also don't believe it is prehistoric everywhere it shows up.

In this case we are lucky to be able to say, ah, that's how that happened. Much if not most of the time, we aren't so lucky.

The reason U106 is accounted Germanic, even when it pops up in Wales or Spain, is that we generally explain the unknown by reference to the known. We know the bulk of U106 shows up in Germanic lands. It seems to be a good general fit for the Germanic peoples. So, when it turns up in Wales, it makes sense to think it might have arrived there in the bodies of some Englishmen. It's more frequent in England than in Wales, the English have historically meddled in and with Wales, so it's not unreasonable to see an English origin as a likely possibility.

Yes, it's remotely possible U106 has been in Wales since prehistoric times, but that seems a less likely scenario than the transplanted Englishmen scenario.

Similarly, when one finds U106 in Spain, its source is unknown or unexplained because U106 is not all that common there. It is much more common in the Germanic countries. So, naturally, since we know that Germanic tribes invaded Spain during the Migration Period, that seems a reasonable source. Again, a prehistoric presence in Spain seems far less likely.

It's not unreasonable to look at the distribution of U106 and conclude that it had a close association with the Germanic peoples, although not an exclusive one.

Similarly, many people assume that L21 is Irish anywhere and everywhere it appears. Given its distribution and only its distribution, it is not unreasonable to think that. We answered that assumption by showing that L21 is too frequent and probably too old in many places on the Continent to have originated in Ireland.

One would have to do something similar with U106 to successfully counter the U106-is-Germanic argument. I'm not sure that is going to be possible. For one thing, the Anglo-Saxons did actually invade Britain in substantial numbers, as did the Vikings later. With L21 we did not have to counter arguments based on such potent, large-scale, historical population movements.

I have no problem believing some U106 got to SE Britain in prehistoric times. The reason I have no trouble believing that is because there is so much U106 right across the Channel in the Low Countries. It makes sense that some of it crossed the Channel long ago. How much is hard to say.

I don't think it likely that an intrepid band of prehistoric U106ers found its way up to Moray in NE Scotland and ensconced itself successfully amid an otherwise pretty solidly L21 population.

Why entertain that unlikely scenario when we know David I settled Northumbrians there in the 12th century?

Is the U106 really unexpected and isolated in Moray? The Busby stats only sample that bit of the east coast so its possible that a decent U106 is true of all of the east of Scotland. Moffat and Wilson seemed to suggest a decent show of U106 and U152 was the norm in eastern Scotland. It is noticeable in Sykes book (although he doesnt do subclades) that Grampian (also in the NE, ex-Pictish heartland area) are charachterised by extremely high R1b (83.5%),11..8% of I but very low R1a. I suspect Moray is very similar. Moffat and Wilson without giving figs or diagrams described U106 as 'very high' in both Morayshire and Aberdeenshire. Moffat and Wilson also show U152 with a decent showing in what you could probably call Aberdeenshire or Grampian, similar in strength to SE Scotland and many parts of England (looks like 5% or so to me - similar to Moray in the Busby study). So, it seems that the pattern of a combination of a very high R1b count that includes a decent show of non-L21 R1b clades like U106 and U152 seem in Moray is likely very closely mirrored in Aberdeenshire too. So, I think its safe to conclude that its not a Moray-specific issue this odd situation of very high R1b that includes U106 and U152, also features I but very little R1a. It seems Aberdeenshire/Grampian is very similar to Moray and perhaps this is characteristic of the NE of Scotland in the old Pictish heartlands.

The last chunk of what was the old Pictish NE heartlands was Tayside (and Fife). Skyes again shows the pattern of very low R1a but R1b drops somewhat at the expense of I. Unfortunately we dont have clade info. It certainly does not look likely to me that any population with much R1a in it is responsible for the arrival of either U106, U152 or I in NE Scotland. The extremely high R1b (regardless of clade) also seems to set NE Scotland apart from England.

It is noticeable too that Strathclyde (old style - not the modern region which includes part of Argyll) which on the whole was not settled by Norse or Anglo-Saxons is again low in R1a but high in I. Certainly in Scotland, R1a and I seem independent to a large degree. It also seems that U106 and R1a also were far from always closely linked. My impression is that a significant chunk of U106 and I in Scotland is not explainable by Vikings or Anglo-Saxons anyway.

...and one other thought. Is the combination of very high R1b but that being not totally L21 dominated unique. I think it probably is. Normally where L21 goes down, so does R1b as a whole. I think that is usually due to the influence of non-L21 R1b clades brought in along with I and sometimes R1a. Where Moray and Aberdeenshire seem to differ is that they recieved significant non-L21 R1b without reducing the overall R1b count. That to me suggests either R1b was always more mixed in the east or that a non-L21 R1b input happened that did not bring the same amount of non-R1b as in other areas of Britain. In short, it seems to me that NE Scotland has something different going on. I think the simplest explanation is that L21 is so high in the west of the isles because its also very high in NW France. In the east they probably follow more the more a mixed pattern of R1b clades of the rest of northern France, Belgium, Holland etc. The NE of Scotland was likely a mix of a strong L21 western input and mixed clade southern/eastern input, giving it a slightly unique balance.

Didn't Moffat say David I settled Northumbrians in Aberdeen as well as Moray?

If you are going to argue "a decent U106 is true of all of the east of Scotland", you're going to lose a key element of your original argument, i.e., that Moray was too far north to be Anglo-Saxon and too far south to be Viking.

You can't have it both ways. You can't make U106 in Moray prehistoric there because it's too far north to be Anglo-Saxon and too far south to be Viking and then argue that it's part of a band of prehistoric U106 that encompasses all of the east coast of Scotland. Once you get to the north side of the Moray Firth you have Viking settlement. Once you get to the southern shore of the Firth of Forth you pick up Anglo-Saxon settlement.

Of course, now we know that Moray and Aberdeen weren't too far north for the Anglo-Saxons, because David I settled some of them there.

U152 reaches its highest frequency in SE England (in Gravesend, Kent, per Busby) but it is about 10% in Busby's Southwell sample. That's in old Mercia, but that's not too far off from old Northumbria. We don't have a U152 sample in Busby from old Northumbria. It's possible, since U152 is more frequent in England than in the "Celtic Fringe", that it, too, came with David I's plantation of Northumbrians. Maybe that is not the case, but it seems more likely than another prehistoric pocket, this time of U152.

R1a is not as frequent in the old Anglo-Saxon homelands as it is in Norway. So, I wouldn't expect to be able to use R1a to track the Anglo-Saxons. It's a better tool to track Norwegian Vikings.

I would not characterize NE Scotland as not being L21 dominated. Look at the Moray sample. It is over 52% L21. For the rest, you have a pretty good amount of U106xU198 (19.4%), a bit of P312xL21,U152 (6%), and a little bit of U152 (4.5%).

That P312xL21,U152 could be old Celtic there, or it might have come north with the Northumbrians, as well. Like U152, it's more frequent in England than it is in Scotland. P312xL21,U152 was 15.2% of the Southwell sample, which is as close as Busby gets to old Northumbria.

If in an area of Scotland where you find elevated frequencies of haplogroups that are much more common in England, you then discover that a 12th-century Scottish king dropped English settlers, why look for a prehistoric explanation?

Didn't Moffat say David I settled Northumbrians in Aberdeen as well as Moray?

If you are going to argue "a decent U106 is true of all of the east of Scotland", you're going to lose a key element of your original argument, i.e., that Moray was too far north to be Anglo-Saxon and too far south to be Viking.

It's all those areas in North East Scotland where Doric is spoken. It's also known as 'North East Scots', ' 'the Moray Claik' or 'the Buchan Claik'.

It's a low germanic dialect related to that spoken in Northumberland and Lothian. It's quite different from Shetlandic which is more heavily influenced by norse.

Barbujani summarised the sort of process you are warning against in 'Genes, people and languages.' in 2000.

"An ad hoc mining of the historical record can lead to a spurious association of any finding in human population genetics with any historical episode that could potentially explain it."

(authun,

I am not using this quote to argue with you. I just wanted to use it because I think it makes an excellent springboard for what I want to say.)

I agree with Barbujani that is a definite danger. On the other hand, one also encounters the tendency to attribute anything in population genetics, especially that which is not immediately and easily explicable, to prehistoric populations. I think we're all aware of that. Look at how the Basques have been portrayed.

I recall a few years ago reading a report about y-dna in Crete (at least I believe it was Crete) and joining in the discussion about it on the Rootsweb list. The authors of the report attributed the R1b (very WAMHish R1b, as I remember it) in the central highland of Crete to Paleolithic natives. The J2 down at the coast represented Neolithic Farmers, or something like that. I haven't gone back and re-read this report, so you'll have to bear with me here regarding precise details. Anyway, a little historical digging revealed that the Venetians had controlled Crete starting back during the Middle Ages and had planted their own people and some Peloponnesian Greeks there, settling them in precisely the same area where the elevated levels of R1b are found today.

So, which kind of "ad hoc mining" had gone on in that instance? It seems to me it was the kind so common a few years ago, in which it was just assumed that everywhere R1b is found it represents continuity with the Old Stone Age. It was like a set of blinders that population geneticists were fond of wearing.

No, we shouldn't just assume anything, and we shouldn't always think there is an historical explanation for every anomaly we encounter. On the other hand, why always seek an answer in the extremely dim and distant past, when so many possibilities and alternatives could have intervened between then and now? If an historical explanation is convincing and seems to be the best explanation, there is no reason to reject it out of hand simply because geneticists seem to prefer references to the Stone Age.

Rich says: “Anyway, a little historical digging revealed that the Venetians had controlled Crete starting back during the Middle Ages and had planted their own people and some Peloponnesian Greeks there, settling them in precisely the same area where the elevated levels of R1b are found today”.

I have spoken of this many times in the past, anyway Venetian R1b will be above all R-U152, very rare or absent in other places of Greece, or the mt K1a1b1 like mine etc.

Then I think that a recent introgression should always be easily discriminated and it will be much more in the future.

Didn't Moffat say David I settled Northumbrians in Aberdeen as well as Moray?If you are going to argue "a decent U106 is true of all of the east of Scotland", you're going to lose a key element of your original argument, i.e., that Moray was too far north to be Anglo-Saxon and too far south to be Viking.

You can't have it both ways. You can't make U106 in Moray prehistoric there because it's too far north to be Anglo-Saxon and too far south to be Viking and then argue that it's part of a band of prehistoric U106 that encompasses all of the east coast of Scotland. Once you get to the north side of the Moray Firth you have Viking settlement. Once you get to the southern shore of the Firth of Forth you pick up Anglo-Saxon settlement.

Of course, now we know that Moray and Aberdeen weren't too far north for the Anglo-Saxons, because David I settled some of them there.

U152 reaches its highest frequency in SE England (in Gravesend, Kent, per Busby) but it is about 10% in Busby's Southwell sample. That's in old Mercia, but that's not too far off from old Northumbria. We don't have a U152 sample in Busby from old Northumbria. It's possible, since U152 is more frequent in England than in the "Celtic Fringe", that it, too, came with David I's plantation of Northumbrians. Maybe that is not the case, but it seems more likely than another prehistoric pocket, this time of U152.

R1a is not as frequent in the old Anglo-Saxon homelands as it is in Norway. So, I wouldn't expect to be able to use R1a to track the Anglo-Saxons. It's a better tool to track Norwegian Vikings.

I would not characterize NE Scotland as not being L21 dominated. Look at the Moray sample. It is over 52% L21. For the rest, you have a pretty good amount of U106xU198 (19.4%), a bit of P312xL21,U152 (6%), and a little bit of U152 (4.5%).

That P312xL21,U152 could be old Celtic there, or it might have come north with the Northumbrians, as well. Like U152, it's more frequent in England than it is in Scotland. P312xL21,U152 was 15.2% of the Southwell sample, which is as close as Busby gets to old Northumbria.

If in an area of Scotland where you find elevated frequencies of haplogroups that are much more common in England, you then discover that a 12th-century Scottish king dropped English settlers, why look for a prehistoric explanation?

I dont think there is a contradiction. Its possible that a portion of U106 (could even be a significant portion) is prehistoric while another portion is early historic. As others have pointed out, the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings did not invent the art of sailing. I think I am in line with Moffat and Wilson in feeling that U106 has a prehistoric and historic period component. I do not believe that contact and movement from the U106 area of Europe started with the Anglo-Saxons. Indeed, if, as a lot of people think, L11 is linked with the beakers then it is an inescapable fact that eastern British beaker culture has its closest parallels in U106 rich areas like the Low Countries and the Rhine. The only question is whether the current continental distribution of U106 is really ancient. If it is then there must have been U106 in Britain in prehistoric times. I have no doubt that a significant chunk of U106 is Germanic and historic period in origin but I think there is a reasonable possibility that a chunk of it was in eastern and southern Britain in prehistoric times. I am sure we will know one way or another when we have much better subclade data, bigger samples and variance calculation will it be possible to say with more confidence.

By the way, the thing about Moray and Medieval settlers applies for a wide area of lowland Scotland, including the whole eastern seaboard, with new noblesl, town people of royal Burghs etc. The feeling though has aways been that the numbers involved were modest. There is no record of a large folk movement of Dark Ages type. That is why people have never been sure if the people of the north-east are mainly Celtic/Pictish or whether they were. I think it is still unclear.

Another thing to not is how restricted the non-Gaelic part of Scotland was even in 1400AD as the map below shows. Most of what is now the north-east, including Morayshire was Gaelic then, 300 years after David I. So, the effect of settlement was not dramatic linguistically. It was only several centuries after the arrival of English north of the Forth/Clyde line that it began to really take off.

One of the things about modern dna is it's a lot like looking at people at the end of the line or queue at a theater. You're looking at the last people in line.

While there might have been some prehistoric U106 in NE Scotland, it doesn't seem all that likely to me. I think Moffat was probably right in his explanation of Naughtie's S142 (I1d) result. Had Naughtie been U106 (which seems to accompany I1 in Britain), Moffat probably would have told him the same thing.

Most of the time, when you find English-looking y-dna in Britain, you can chalk it up to Englishmen. That's just what I think.

But it doesn't really matter what I think. Time and more data will tell.

I don't know this, but I'll bet most of those Moray U106ers are R-L48.

Rich says: “Anyway, a little historical digging revealed that the Venetians had controlled Crete starting back during the Middle Ages and had planted their own people and some Peloponnesian Greeks there, settling them in precisely the same area where the elevated levels of R1b are found today”.

I have spoken of this many times in the past, anyway Venetian R1b will be above all R-U152, very rare or absent in other places of Greece, or the mt K1a1b1 like mine etc.

Then I think that a recent introgression should always be easily discriminated and it will be much more in the future.

I was thinking the same thing about the Venetians and U152. There was also a little bit of R1a on the central Cretan highland with the R1b, as I recall, but nobody dubbed it Paleolithic.